Medical Errors: The 1 or 2 Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

Here are some of my thoughts on the replies. I believe that overwork is a factor. Medical personnel in this country are paid about the same as other countries but medical staff report that it is less satisfying here. This applies not just to nurses but to physicians who have incentives to do lots of procedures quickly, taking on lots of patients.

Beyond just the overwork it's also the system. Safety policies are nonstandardized and weaker in some cases that other countries which leads to medication errors and not hand washing which are two of the biggest killers.

As noted above in the original post, research shows that the lowered life-expectancies are not the result of lifestyle factors such as obesity but lower quality of care. Lifestyle factors lower the number of years the average person remains healthy without impairments. The U.S. is also very bad on this measure and it does explain, in part, our higher health care costs.

Interestingly, lifestyle factors don't seem to improve life-expectancy much except for smoking and excessive alcohol use. Exercise may may improve life-expectancy.

I hesitate to mention Wiki, but I did go there and thought it worth the trip. Here's the article:

en.wikipedia.org...

A 2000 Institute of Medicine report estimated that medical errors are estimated to result in about between 44,000 and 98,000 preventable deaths and 1,000,000 excess injuries each year in U.S. hospitals.

Some researchers questioned the accuracy of the IOM study, criticizing the statistical handling of measurement errors in the report and reporting both significant subjectivity in determining which deaths were "avoidable" or due to medical error and an erroneous assumption that 100% of patients would have survived if optimal care had been provided. A 2001 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association of seven Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers estimated that for roughly every 10,000 patients admitted to the subject hospitals, one patient died who would have lived for three months or more in good cognitive health had "optimal" care been provided.

Medical errors are associated with inexperienced physicians and nurses, new procedures, extremes of age, complex care and urgent care. Poor communication (whether in one's own language or, as may be the case for medical tourists, another language), improper documentation, illegible handwriting, inadequate nurse-to-patient ratios, and similarly named medications are also known to contribute to the problem. Patient actions may also contribute significantly to medical errors. Falls, for example, are often due to patients' own misjudgements. Human error has been implicated in nearly 80 percent of adverse events that occur in complex healthcare systems. The vast majority of medical errors result from faulty systems and poorly designed processes versus poor practices or incompetent practitioners.

I'm just looking for information. This helped me.

That's why it is called practicing medicine

2nd